


Because I Could Not Stop for Death

by Rose_Verte



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Death, Kravitz origin story babey!, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Trauma, Trauma Recovery, brief sex mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23174767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_Verte/pseuds/Rose_Verte
Summary: Mac Kravitz was murdered Midnight on a Wednesday the year he was sixteen years old. That wasn’t, however, the day he died.
Relationships: Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Who’s ready for the social distancing fic renaissance? 
> 
> For real, though. Stay safe and healthy, friends. And if you liked this please kudos and comment. It means the world to me.
> 
> Taako isn’t in this chapter but I stg he will be in this story.
> 
> Title is borrowed from an Emily Dickenson poem. :)

Mac Kravitz was murdered Midnight on a Wednesday the year he was sixteen years old. That wasn’t, however, the day he died. 

It had been a rough year for Kravitz, who had started going solely by his family name to honor his parents (High Priest and Priestess of the Raven Queen), who had been casualties of an uprising of necromancers in their ranks. Things had been starting to look up, however, what with his acceptance into Bardic College and the cute guy he’d met at the bookstore who wanted to meet for coffee and kept looking at him like he wasn’t a gawky pimple faced orphan only capable of talking about things that made people either bored or uncomfortable. 

It turned out, of course, to be have been sort of a false spring for his crap of a year since said guy was not only the son of one of the aforementioned sect of necromancers who killed his parents but had sought him out because he believed ritualistically killing him would usher in their return. And so that was how Kravitz who had on top of his a year of almost hopeless despair and loneliness, washed his finally almost blemish free face, put on his nicest jacket imagining himself for a moment, to possess the kind of charm and ease in his own body that adults he looked up to such as his father and the conductor of the city orchestra did, and accepted an invitation from a boy he’d met only twice to meet at his apartment and why it was so embarrassingly easy for him to get him drunk and naked before stabing him in the heart with a silver dagger and subsequently killing all of his hopes for a career as a conductor and, on a less critical but more insult to injury note, of having lived the kind of life where he would get to have sex with cute strangers you met in coffee shops, or, you know, at all. 

So Kravitz was killed and it was a stupid death. But his murderer made a mistake. You see, his sect was under the impression that control over life and death and not the acceptance of it, was the proper way to worship the Raven Queen. So, when he invoked her name in Kravitz’s killing, she got a little upset and made sure that he also had a very messy, abrupt and stupid death shortly following Kravitz’s.

But Kravitz didn’t experience any of that. What he felt was pain. And regret. And what he saw was nothing. 

And then. A woman. She smiled. 

“Who are you?”

“Death.” She touched his hair gently. “It’s good to see you, Kravitz. Though I hadn’t meant for it to be so soon.” 

He blinked. His eyes welled up. “My Queen.” He had heard poems about her, seen her statues. Nothing could prepare him for the majesty of her in the flesh. Though flesh wasn’t exactly the term, was it. And if she was touching him… “Am I...did I die?”

She nodded gently, her brow furrowed ever so slightly. “ _Your_ Queen, am I? I don’t remember you taking the rights.”

He found himself unable and unwilling to answer in any way beside straightforward honesty. 

“They had faith in you. And I trust them.” His parents. 

Her smile again. “You do, don’t you? Even after it killed you, you’ve always been willing to trust. I think I would like that as a quality in my retinue. It would make a nice change.” 

“You want me to join your...? Are my...will I see my parents again?”

Her smile faded. “No, child. Their souls are at peace now. When you join them you will be beyond seeing.” 

“Oh.”

“If you trust in me, trust this. It is not a cruel end that has befallen them and it won’t be for you either.”

“OK.” He wasn’t exactly reassured by her words but he accepted them. It was how he was brought up, after all. 

She chuckled. “I know. That’s never an easy pill to swallow, especially for one so young. But for you, I can make it a little easier.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You were killed, Kravitz. But you haven’t died yet. I can’t give you back the life that was taken from you...wouldn’t if I could. But I can slow this moment. I can give you time. You won’t have the peace your parents have. Not yet. But if you serve me, become a reaper and enforce my laws, up until the moment you expire, you will still have life. Do you wish for that?”

Kravtiz was sixteen when he was killed. He’d never fallen in love. Never had very many friends. Never traveled or seen anything more exciting than the Bardic College Orchestra (once!). Before his parents died, he’d been filled with dreams that he nurtured quietly. After they were gone he lived on them. On the idea of himself as a man in the world, of anything to beat back the loneliness of losing the two people he’d loved so completely. He never thought of trying to get them back like his murderer tried to do for his own parents. They wouldn’t have wanted that. 

But when their Goddess offered him a second chance and the only cost was serving the ideals they had died for. Well. It wasn’t really much of a choice.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one's a lot longer than the last one and hopefully you guys like it as this is the part with the OCs. 
> 
> This one's got a lot of trauma recovery and death talk. I mean, I guess the whole fic does but...yeah. I'll add some more tags for that.
> 
> Next chapter is Taako Time. 
> 
> Please leave a kudos if you liked it and if you leave a comment you will make my entire day.

Kravitz didn’t have a body. That was the first thing that took getting used to. Sure, he’d _had_ a body. He assumed it had been found and buried. He didn’t like to think about it. But he wasn’t held back by that anymore. He was a shining light. An untethered soul. But, due to the gifts of the Raven Queen he was a soul that manifested it’s own form. 

He could be a cat. Or a dragon. Or a chair. Or, if he was feeling really nostalgic, a sixteen year old boy with acne scars. Well, not so much nostalgic as he reverted to that form when he wasn’t shape shifting because he guessed that’s the house his soul was comfortable living in. Which, being a teenager forever wasn’t exactly his favorite thing. But he could get used to it. Given enough time. He guessed. But he couldn’t help the tiny sigh that escaped his lips as he examined his all too familiar face in spectral mirror, waiting for his next training assignment. 

“You don’t have to look like you did in your life to be you, you know.” 

Maritza was one of the other Reapers. There used to be more, the Raven Queen said. Sworn in devotion to her at the point of death. But humans feared what they didn’t understand. And her service...it wasn’t easy to understand. Now there were only three, counting Kravitz, who hardly counted while he was still learning to manifest. 

“What do you mean?” 

She smirked, her green eyes twinkling. She had been leaning against a wall, one of the other spectral constructs. The Astral Plane had structures based on the beliefs of those who lived there. Or sort of lived there. 

“One of the perks of the job, kid. Your light manifests you as how you see yourself. And the cute kid sidekick is fun and all but if we’re gonna get necromancers taking you seriously without you having to use up your spell slots possessing their furniture, you might wanna think about seeing yourself differently.”

⁂

Kravitz had been dead (dying) for one year. They had a little party for him to celebrate the occasion. The Raven Queen’s Reapers didn’t typically celebrate their births but they marked milsetones all the same. No food or drink, of course. Nothing grew in the Astral Plane and their bodies didn’t require nutrition so refreshments were really a thing. Which was too bad. Kravitz missed cake and he’d never tried wine. 

But there was art and there was music. And that was enough. 

“Many happy returns, Kravvy.” Maritza kissed his cheek and then jumped up suddenly, cheering as a shower of fireworks shot through the ever starless sky. Her construct hair was the same green as her eyes and tied up in a high pony tail that swung wildly when she moved. 

Farther off, he watched as Colum (the solemn faced halfling who filled out their trio of Reapers), led the selected condemned souls they’d granted a reprieve to for this occasion out of the Eternal Stockade to play an impromptu concert with spectrally constructed instruments in his honor.

“You know, all things considered, this is a lot fancier than my seventeenth birthday was ever going to be.” 

She laughed and turned towards him, kissing his cheek again. Her heels added a lot to her construct’s decidely medium elvish height, but she still had to tip toe to get on his level. Kravitz now was a lot of things. Among them: handsome, mature and decidedly tall. 

“You’re not seventeen, hon. You never will be. But what you are now is so much better.”

He chuckled but didn’t respond, falling into a hush as the music started. Still, his thoughts traveled back to the face he’d last seen in the mirror. It was him, still him. But it was him as he’d always hoped he’d be. Like his father. Like the conductor. And it wasn’t a fantasy anymore. It was the reality his soul had constructed. It was about time he’d accepted that. 

⁂

Kravitz liked visiting the Material Plane. The air felt different on his manifested body. Certainly not the way it had in his other life but...nice. And food...it was like every meal the first one after a period of starvation, without having to live through the hunger pains. And then, once he’d gotten settled enough in his form so it didn’t intimidate the living outright there was...touch. 

Kravitz, of course, didn’t have much experience in physical expression before his murder and it was a long time before he made any moves to rectify that. It was hard to open up in that way when the last time had left him so vulnerable. Hard but...maybe not as hard as it should have been. The Raven Queen had said his gift was trust and there came a time when his new body awakened to the needs of his old one and this time, he found he was quite familiar with the hunger pangs, so the speak. 

And it wasn’t long after that that he found himself bare again in the room of a man he barely knew. And if he was a lot harder to kill now that he was already dying, there was still, for that moment, a leap of faith he needed to take. So he did. 

⁂

It was the Queen herself who taught him about his constructed body. Not the subtleties he’d learned in his first year training with Martiza and Colum, but the fact that it was still his body even if his soul was manifesting it, that it was dying and that one day, if he didn’t retire, it would start reflect that. He’d be cold. He’d lose his desires. His identity. Everything that made him ‘him’. He was still living now, but it was borrowed time. One day he truly would among the undead. And then not too long after that, there there would be no ‘un’ about it. 

“You don’t have to worry about that, though, sweetie. That’s hundreds of years from now. Maybe thousands. Sweet little thing like you, you’ll retire a long time before it’s an issue” 

Maritza said this with a smile, but for the first time he could remember Kravitz found her cheeriness less than reassuring. Colum was the one to turn to, then. They didn’t call him the Grim Reaper for nothing. (Well, there was also penchant for manifesting as skeleton. But you know, also his general disposition). 

“Retire.” Colum rolled his eyes. “She means choose to die. You get that, right? Retirement is suicide. Look, kid. The cold setting in, it’s not so bad.” He cracked the fingers on his right hand and Kravitz felt a chill go down his spine. He hadn’t realized...it hadn’t even occured to him...that Colum might be closing in on his end. He knew this life wasn’t forever but...he thought at least they’d ride that out together. 

“It’s...look, when it sets in it’s...it’s better in a way. You’ve been...there’s a mortal you’ve been seeing, right?”

“Uh...yeah. I...there is.” He didn’t know why admitting this to Colum was so embarrassing but his recent...activities were something he’d kept private from his team. They weren’t his parents. And even if they were, his parents were the type of people who would have been happy about him experiencing one of lives joys for the first time. But there was a...reluctance he felt sometimes to reveal personal details to them. He had thought it was just a holdover from his youthful awkwardness. He wondered now if it was more than that. 

“Lovers.” He snorted, dismissively. “Sorry, Kravitz. I know this all must be exciting and new for you but having lived...if you can call it that...through what I have, it would have been kinder if she didn’t let us form those kind of attachments.” He shook his head. “I’m not being holier than thou, here. I’ve been married, and made a windower, three times.” He patted Kravitz’s arm and wouldn’t you know it? It was kind of cold. “Rava...she’s the Reaper who trained me. She liked to say that was our way out. That it made our deaths feel like the meant something. Retirement was finding someone that you loved enough to die with. Well, Krav. I loved my wife and husbands. I really think I did, in the end. But not enough to die. Not yet.” 

Kravitz didn’t know what to say to that. 

Colum smirked at his silence but it was, like everything else about him, grim. “Personally, I think the point isn’t to retire with the people we lose. I think RQ wants us to feel the pain of watching someone we care about die. As many times as necessary so we never forget the gravity of what we stand for.” 

He found his voice, finally. “I don’t...no...I...I think it’s more than that. She wants us to live. She...she’s gifted us another chance at that.”

Colum looked at him for a long moment before sighing. “You would think that, wouldn’t you? I’d say I hope you never change but eventually...you will.”

⁂

He tried not to think about that conversation, he did. But it became harder for him to maintain his relationships after that. It was too hard. He still found men he liked sometimes. He still took the leap but...not for long. 

Sixty-three years after Kravitz was killed, Maritza retired. They had a party for her, but it didn’t have the same luster. Apparently there had been a child. Not a biological one, but a child nonetheless. A human girl she’d saved from being a necromancer’s sacrifice and had been supporting privately. Kravitz had had no idea. Neither had Colum. The Raven Queen was silent on the matter. 

And the child, now a very old woman, had died in her sleep and after that, Maritza was done. 

Two years later, Colum was gone too. Not retirement. Just gone. He’d gotten too cold, Kravitz guessed.

It was harder then, to look at mortals with anything other than sadness. 

He still had his handsome face, but sometimes a skeleton was easier. 

And call him sentimental, but he liked it when they called him grim.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uhhhh...this chapter is twice as long as the first two combined. Whoops. What can I say? You throw Taako in the mix and there's a lot. 
> 
> This whole fic is...very stream of consciousness-y, so thanks for indulging in that. 
> 
> Stay safe and if you like what you read, please kudos and comment. It seriously means more to me than you can possibly imagine.

The thing was, after as many years as Kravitz had been at this you had to come up with little things to pass the time. 

First there were the voices. Acting had never been one of the specialties he was planning to study in college, but listen...it was hard to work in a violin solo during a bounty. He’d tried. 

He’d started handicapping himself, too. Going the long way around with reaping, just so he wouldn’t get bored. After all, he couldn’t refuse bounties if they seemed like they were easy mode. Well, he couldn’t really refuse bounties at all because he was pretty sure he was the only reaper left. If he thought about that long enough he got worried, but his Queen still assured him he was allowed to enjoy what life was granted to him so he wondered sometimes if she had other reapers she concealed from him or if so...why? 

He didn’t worry too much about that, though. His gift was trust, after all and above all else, he trusted the Raven Queen. She had more than earned that. 

And then there were the games. He wasn’t sure how that started. He’d always enjoyed games of chance and strategy. He’d played a little chess with his mother and Colum had taught him a repertoire of card games long ago. 

But sometimes...sometimes he would catch a bounty and think. I’ve got you anyway. Let’s have a little fun. Sometimes he wondered if that was the only thrill he had left. He didn’t think he was getting cold but he felt the need to take a lover in quite some time, so who would tell him? 

And sometimes...a very rare sometimes...if the won, and he looked in their eyes and felt that thing inside of him that the Raven Queen called a strength even if it felt like a weakness most of the time he gave them...time. It was never enough. Never what they really wanted. They were dead already. They were dead the moment the Raven Queen told him their names but over the years she allowed him a little leeway. After all, she’d given it to him. And what was the use of a goddess’ favor if you couldn’t give it away?

⁂

But then there was the lab. The floating, half crystalized lab. That was...a new one. He might have even gotten excited a couple of hundred years ago, seeing that. He couldn’t quite summon that at the moment, but he had to admit he was intrigued. 

⁂

That night as he lay down in his bed (a construct that appeared presumably for moments like this, not because his constructed body required rest) he ran the whole mission back in his head. The legion of souls almost escaping certainly had certainly upped the difficulty rating on that one. There was a moment there where he’d actually felt concern...worry even. That was probably why his heart, a part of his body that normally served no functional purpose, saw fit to beat, if not exactly wildly then at least _actually_ at the memory of the night’s events. 

It was certainly not the trio of adventurers with unexplained death counts. Not the gullible dwarf or the widower who clung to life enough to play for it before he even got the chance to suggest it. And it certainly wasn’t the foul mouthed elf who behaved like he didn’t care about living in battle, who talked like he didn’t care about anything else and who was the first person he’d ever met to come up with his time loophole all on his own and to do it calmly in the service of someone he’d met only an hour before. 

No, it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. Even if Kravitz couldn’t help but see his face when he closed his eyes, laughing and impossibly pretty even obscured by a null suit. A thought that felt absurdly shallow and strange, especially since Kravitz couldn’t remember being attracted to someone even under normal circumstances in...quite some time actually. 

All of that was to say that this didn’t matter. The adventurers had promised to stay out of his way for now and he _trusted_ that they would. The next time he saw any of them, they wouldn’t have their forms anymore. Just souls ready for peace. And maybe by then, he’d have earned a little himself. 

⁂

The first time he came to question the trust he’d put in those three came a few months later when their names came up as having once again died (multiple times!) without crossing over. Of all the ungrateful stunts! He felt personally affronted by this one. He’d liked them, all three of them. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt anything more positive than vague pity for one of his bounties. To make him crack like that. A professional like him! The gift of time was his choice, not there's. And certainly not one to be abused. 

And when that elf, that _Taako_ spoke up for the halfling he’d thought...well. He knew what he’d thought. But clearly he’d been played. They were nothing but necromancers. 

But maybe he was losing his touch. This was...much as his was loathe to admit it, if he was going to be so easily compromised, the Queen needed to know. 

⁂

She laughed. The Raven Queen wasn’t an easily amused goddess but that day, she laughed. 

Not because she wasn’t concerned about the flagrant disregard of her laws. In fact, she showed him other names to investigate. A whole town of them that had been out of her view until now for some reason. She wanted answers and she wanted justice. 

She laughed at his feelings about it. 

“Not your _feelings_ , child. Don’t be dramatic. Goodness, I took you young, didn’t I? But really, to see you so offended at having your goodwill betrayed! Darling, I’ve seen you give thousands of souls a second chance that no one else would have. I’ve never seen you regret it. Not even the chance you gave to the man who brought you to me. What makes this one so different?” 

He didn’t have an answer for that and the Raven Queen didn’t have time for a longer meeting but she did favor him with a kiss on the forehead and assured that she trusted his judgement implicitly in this, and all matters. 

⁂

The first time he saw Taako alone he told himself some kind of convoluted nonsense about accosting each member of the group separately so he could compare their stories. 

That night, he and Taako talked for two hours and he learned three things. 

1\. What happened in the town of Refuge was unbelievable.  
2\. Taako, in between dark jokes, seemed wrecked in a way that struck him as so hauntingly genuine that he was inclined to believe the story anyway.  
3\. He had freckles on his _knees_ for fuck’s sake. 

He’d entirely forgotten about any plans to corroborate his account with the others. It wasn’t about them, even when it was, he could admit that to himself now. It was about the look on Taako’s face when started to tell a story and then pivoted suddenly. Like there was something dark and painful he was hiding from. It was about the way he never talked about himself except in the grand sense, as if Kravitz already knew and admired him. It was about how much that was probably true, but not in the way he thought. 

It was all he could do not think about him while he went through the motions, taking down yet another unimaginative necromancer. And when he delivered his report to the Queen and just happened to mention Taako’s story, he couldn’t deny the intense relief he felt when she confirmed some of it...Istus _was_ involved, she had checked in with her. Which usually meant to stay back and let things sort themselves out. So he wouldn’t have to take Taako, or his friends or the citizens of the timestuck town in. 

He also wouldn’t have to see him again.

But when Taako called him, he went anyway. 

⁂

The worst thing about their first date was finding out that he’d gone cold, or at least was starting to. It wasn’t his insecurity about whether it _was_ a date in the beginning or the way Taako’s umbrella reeked with lichly energies and almost took a shot at him. 

For the former, first dates were always that kind of awkward and for the latter...frankly, he’d decided to trust Taako, once and for all. And he wasn’t going back on it. Whatever was going on, frustrating as it was, if Istus was involved he wasn’t making moves until he was absolutely sure. And the only thing he was sure of right now is that Taako didn’t know a damn thing about it. 

And maybe that he hoped it would be nice if he could help him find out. 

The going cold thing, though. That threw him for a loop. 

So, after he’d met with his Queen about necrotic umbrellas and held it together as best he could he found himself lying in his unnecessary bed again, wide awake and for the first time in a very long time wishing that his own fate had been different. 

It was a private, selfish thought to want to touch someone and it had been so long since he’d indulged in it. Why now, when it came the impulse came on so strongly, did his touch have to repulse? Why couldn’t he have met Taako when he was warm? 

And if he was cold, would this be his last chance?

⁂

Despite the potential roadblock his apparently ice cold skin might have caused and with the possibility of duress influencing his choices erased (he hoped) Taako seemed more than amenable to future dates. And all things considered, Kravitz no longer felt the need to dull his eagerness. He _liked_ Taako, he wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. What was wrong with that? 

But dating Taako was unlike any romantic experience he’d ever had. 

⁂

On their second date, Taako invited him to dinner at a restaurant called Olive Garden, which turned out to not only be an excuse to use the Unlimited Pasta Pass he had bought on a whim at Fantasy Costco, but said pasta pass turned out to only cover unlimited soda for the bearer’s guest. 

“I’ma be honest, dude.” Taako admitted as he searched various pockets for legal tender that would cover the cost of an extra dish plus tip. “I did not think you ate.” 

“I can...I’m happy to contribute if you don’t…” Kravitz stuttered, clearly more embarrassed about the situation than he was. 

Taako snorted, pulling a ruby out from what looked like his armpit and placing it on the check. “Don’t be stupid.” He patted Kravitz gently on the (gloved) hand. “You’re gonna take me somewhere much nicer than this.” 

⁂

On their third date Kravitz took him to one of Goldcliff’s scenic overlooks, which over another one of their surprisingly revelatory conversations, turned out to be a setting that evoked mixed feelings at best in Taako. Nevertheless, Taako hooked his arm in his as the walked and when the stars came out conjured a firework display that would have impressed even Colum. It was at that point that Kravitz realized what he should have last time but had been too willfully besotted to think about it. 

“Your umbrella...you’re not using it?”

Taako shrugged, putting his decidedly less stylish wand away. “She wasn’t behaving around you.”

“She?” 

“Seems like a she. Look, I wouldn’t pack this level one shit on a mission but you know. I’m kinda banking on not having to roll for initiative while you woo me, thug.”

⁂

On their fourth date, he took Taako to the Neverwinter Opera house and Taako fell asleep during the second act. 

After he was woken, he yawned, a little confused and tried to make an excuse about resting his eyes. Kravitz, however, unable to totally curb his annoyance as much as he wanted to (opera wasn’t for everyone, he _knew_ that) muttered something about his snoring and Taako’s eyes widened suddenly, surprised. 

“Was I really?” 

Kravitz confirmed, already embarrassed about his pettiness. Taako was _tired_. They both knew this. His boss had been pushing his team harder than ever in the last few weeks. 

“That’s so weird. I _never_ fall asleep around new people.” He yawned again. “Sorry, Bones. Wanna catch me up? Who’s the lady in red?” 

⁂

On their fifth date Kravitz summoned every memory he had from the year after his parents death when he’d lived alone and cooked for himself, packed a full picnic basket and rifted them to a private beach. 

And when he, shyly, indicated that he’d made the humble chicken salad sandwiches from scratch, Taako looked, instead of impressed kind of...sad. And even though he was sure it couldn’t be the reason, he had to ask. 

“Sorry, I...it’s been a long time. We can...I can pick something up if you’re not...if this isn’t up to snuff.” 

Taako pursed his lips. “What? No. they’re fine. They’re sandwiches. They’re...dude, they’re not gourmet but they’re...I appreciate the effort. Don’t sweat it. It’s not that.” 

And then he told him something terrible. And he tore little pieces off the end of the sandwiches while he told it, avoiding Kravitz’s eyes with a blank expression, like he thought the terrible thing made him terrible and he didn’t want Kravitz to look into his eyes and see inside.

And all Kravitz could think was how much he sure he was that he loved him and how important it was that he stay by his side as long as he could. 

But he didn’t say that. He just listened. And took his hand. And since the beach was warm and he hadn’t felt the need to wear gloves and his touch had made Taako smile in a way it never had before, after a very long while when they were both laughing again, he kissed him and he didn’t stop kissing him for a very long time. 

⁂

On their sixth date, Taako told him he was working on a new spell he wanted his opinion on which didn’t make much sense (they practiced very different schools of magic) but was the kind of cryptic stone of far speech message he’d stopped questioning weeks ago. 

And when he rifted into his room to find Taako naked and running a slight, magically induced fever (one hour duration) with a smirk on his face and a command to “ice pack me, baby” he was glad he hadn’t. 

⁂

The next time he saw Taako, he was being drowned in the black tar and he wouldn’t meet his eyes as his grabbed Magnus’ hand, pulled him to safety and presumably, left Kravitz to finally die. 

⁂

If he couldn’t die, how could he drown? Why did he choke and struggle and become more entangled the more he fought? It seemed particularly unfair, really. Drowning was a bad death, filled with pain and terror. But it was quick. 

But his death had never been quick, had it? And he was getting cold so...did that make him closer to mortal? If he couldn’t get out and his Queen didn’t deign to intervene...was this the end? 

Should he just...stop fighting? Was this his _time_?

He didn’t quite do that but he did...pause. And think about it. You think of a lot when you’re drowning, or at least when you’re a being that doesn’t actually need to breathe being drowned in polluted version of the sea he’d guarded for centuries. 

He thought about Taako because lately, he was always thinking about Taako. He thought about how sure he’d been that he loved him and how he tried to open his mouth to say it when he saw Taako’s spirit just then but it had filled with tar. And even though he tried not to, he thought about the boy from the cafe who he’d trusted with his life when he shouldn’t have and how ugly it was to conflate those two memories when Taako had been heroic in that moment, he knew it. He had turned away from Kravitz because he was trying to save his friend (but hadn’t the boy who’d killed him been trying to save his parents?)

But the ugly thought stayed and he sank deeper and deeper. And then he thought about how much he wished, even if he was hurt and even if he couldn’t say anything, Taako had looked his way, just once, so they could have had a goodbye. 

When it was too much to think about Taako, finally, he thought about the day his Queen had taken him and how lonely and stupid he’d been and how eager he’d been for someone, something to pledge himself to...for someone to trust, for someone to love and the way that Maritza and Colum had treated their service to her...and then he shied away from that thought, because if his faith in the Raven Queen wavered, what did he have left? 

Well, he had himself. He had everything he was and everything she had made him. He had hundreds of years of experience. Hundreds of battles that got so easy they started to bore. He had the Kravitz he’d made in the mirror, who could be anything he wanted to be, anything but the victim he once was. This was the first real challenge he’d faced in his second life. Was he really going to lay down and sink and...die (maybe?) without a fight?

Not bloody likely. 

⁂

It felt like a hour before he fought his way out of the tar to stand on the constructed beach again. It might have been minutes for all he knew. He was panting. He didn’t need to breathe, he never needed to breathe again but he was panting. He felt more alive than he’d felt in a long time. Except maybe when he was with Taako. 

Here was the truth. He trusted the Raven Queen. And maybe for some people trust like that would have been foolish. His life had been literally, at her whim, for centuries. Kravitz had been hurt before. But still he trusted. He didn’t trust _blindly_. He knew his Queen. Knew her as deeply and truly as he could. Because no matter what happened, she would always be the person who, when he was small and helpless and bleeding, reached out to help. And if he was never that weak and alone again, she was who had been there for him when he needed her most. She loved him, He knew that to be as true as the laws of life and death. And if there any part of her considerable power could be extended to save him from this, she would do it. 

He knew Taako, too, didn’t he? It hadn’t been centuries, it had been months, and yet. He knew him. He knew why he didn’t look him in the eye just then. And it was the same reason Taako had driven off a cliff in Goldcliff, had bargained with death for the life of ghost possessed robot, why he used his magic to trick and banish the only person he’d met in years who remembered him from before his fall and a dozen other things he was sure he hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him. 

Taako did what he could. And he _couldn’t_ have saved Kravitz from this. Magnus, being torn from his body by a lich...that Taako could, with his considerable power, fix. He couldn’t beat what Kravitz was facing, at least not then. So he didn’t look. Not because he didn’t care but because he did, but he had to focus on what he was doing something about. 

And maybe, just maybe, Taako who he knew well enough to know that the _trust_ wasn’t always easy...maybe he knew he would be able to get out there on his own. Maybe even when _he_ doubted it, Taako trusted he could leave him and focus on his mission and he would be _ok_. 

It was leap. But it was one he was willing to take. His Queen believed in him. Taako believed in him. And whatever was going on, he was going to help. 

Except. It turned out that was the one thing he couldn’t do at the moment. 

⁂

There was nothing quite like the feeling of being stuck, alone and information-less, on the Astral Plane for hours, worried not only about your new lover fighting powerful forces that almost took you down, not only the silence from your Goddess, a force so whole and powerful that should never be taken down but also just in general, maybe like everyone else on every other plan for all you knew.

And then, once you waited patiently, holding yourself together, ready for anything for a long time, you heard the Story. 

And then after that, you had to wait some more to find out what would happen next. 

⁂

It wasn’t that he was so terribly shocked by who Taako was. Hearing Taako’s story only served to reinforce what he’d already thought of him. He’d knew life had been unkind to him in more ways than he had been ready to say, he just hadn’t realized he _couldn’t_ say them. He knew he was the kind of person who didn’t see himself as a hero but who really didn’t like seeing his friends hurt, who hated obligations but who loved solving other people’s problems nonetheless. He was Taako. He knew who he was. 

He just didn’t know how long he had been that elf, or why. 

And now all he wanted to do was get back to him. And so, once again, he closed his eyes and prayed. He believed in His Queen. He didn’t know where she was but somehow, some way. She was going to free him. And he was going to find Taako and no matter where he was or how, even if he was dead, he was going to bring him back. Fuck it. He was the Raven Queen’s emissary. Taako had traveled through all of creation. He could give him a little more time. 

As soon as she got him out of here. But he had to believe. He had to trust. 

And so, when the portal finally opened and he stepped out and saw what he saw, he almost didn’t believe it. 

He didn’t know why. He trusted Taako. He loved Taako. He heard his incredible story and he trusted and loved him even more. 

But for one moment he was that boy again, naked and bleeding and weak. (Not physically, thank the Queen). And somebody _else_ was reaching for him. And it meant more than he could possibly have imagined it would. 

And he wanted to say something, to explain that. But then he ran over and he was already kissing him. 

⁂

Here’s what the Raven Queen gave Kravitz: time. Time to grow, time to trust, time to fight, time to love. There would come a day when he would die, completely and fully. His spirit cold, no longer able to form his thoughts or create his body, sent to rest in the astral sea, part of the same peaceful flow as his parents, dead so long ago. 

But she loved him. And she gave him time. And if, in the following years and months, he found himself in a form that far from going cold and dying, felt warm as ever. Well. Who could blame her? It was her gift to give.


End file.
